


I have outlived the night

by lilith_morgana



Series: Son of the land [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23971537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: He’s five, he’s eighteen, nineteen, twenty, forty-six and fifty-five, he’s fifty-six, fifty-seven and ready to die.Instead, he lives.
Relationships: Celia Mac Tir/Loghain Mac Tir, Rowan Guerrin/Loghain Mac Tir
Series: Son of the land [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1729204
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22





	I have outlived the night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HardingHightown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardingHightown/gifts).



> The prompt was _“Somewhere in that library of the past”_ , a quote from Borges. Title borrowed from another poem by Borges. Angst and characters and a couple of quotes from The Stolen Throne borrowed from Bioware. Ages are… estimations, I guess. Don’t come at me with numbers. And I think we’ve established by now that I emphatically do not write drabbles.

****  
  
  
History is a broken circle: 

  
  
  
  


**1.  
**  
  
He’s a child, then a young man, and they hide from the usurpers on the throne.  
  
Safely tucked in between the lush trees, Loghain’s father teaches him to fight and parry, to ride and hunt. They’re outlaws but they’re not _outlaws_ ; he explains the distinction thoroughly, tirelessly.  
  
“You do right by the people who depend on you,” he says. “There is no excuse for a man who doesn’t.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
He’s sixty-five and hides in a deserted hovel in a town marked by the Blight and even more so by a ruler’s mistakes and betrayal of his own people.  
  
The irony is not lost on him.  
  
  


  
**2.**  
  
  
He’s nineteen, twenty and love burns in his chest; Rowan doesn’t want it and _he_ has no use for it so he doesn’t understand why it doesn’t go away. It seems entirely unreasonable for his body to betray him in this fashion.  
  
And then, suddenly, she’s in his arms and he _melts_ into her in a way that is anything but dignified but he cannot find it in himself to care. Her hair is a fire around them and his hands gentler than he has ever willed them to be before; when she kisses him, finally, it tastes of salt and iron. It’s broken, whatever it is that they have; it’s more than enough.   
  
Between the desperate charges and daring strategies he feels in every duel, every narrowly won victory, that one of them will die young.  
  
He always assumes it will be him.  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“She asked for you.” Maric’s voice is ice inside the summer warm castle. It cuts through the room that separates them. “On her deathbed. I told her you were right beside her. She… lost her eyesight towards the end.”  
  
His voice breaks something beneath Loghain’s breastbone. He curls his hands into fists where he stands by the window in this castle of ghosts. Rowan, bold and commanding, forever a breach between them and he knew it would be this way, knew it would never cease to be this way despite Gwaren and Celia and the endless string of days and duties that has followed. Rowan, lionhearted and young even in death, moves around them and he wonders how many times he must lose her.   
  
“I’m-” he says but this grief that does not belong to him is beyond words.  
  
There’s a faint sound of Cailan and Anora playing in the garden, their child-hearts sturdier, lighter. Or perhaps they simply scar in more subtle ways.  
  
“Come,” Maric says eventually. “I’ll show you where she rests.”  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Celia dies slowly, a pain stretched out so thin over months and months that it hollows her out.  
  
He’s not there for all of it, useless in the face of a battle that is not his to fight.  
  
He’s not there for most of it, cannot bear the thought of her capable body and ferocious will being tempered by sickness, her loved features marked by fate; for as long as he lives he will never forgive himself for this particular weakness. He even tells her as much.  
  
“Oh Loghain,” Celia murmurs when he sits by her side. “You never forgive anyone for anything. But you will have to forgive me for taking my leave now, I’m afraid.”  
  
He’s there in the end and then there’s another grave that he never visits.  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
He’s fifty-one and the funeral feast they hold for Maric cuts a hole in him, bleeds him dry.  
  
It’s the last straw, he thinks, mercifully unaware of the endless losses that will soon follow.  
  
  
  
  
  
**3.**  
  
  
He’s nineteen and there are thirty men answering to him where he prances around in full disguise in order to be mistaken for a prince. To be mistaken for a _commander_ though he’s still just a commoner and though he knows the only reason anyone listens to him in the first place is because he’s tall and broad-shouldered, _stern_ like his father before him. Erratic and stupid as far as qualifications go, but it’s what he has.  
  
He charges the tiny army up towards a patch of land they stand a chance of defending and they _win_ , they _do_ _._ After the next attempt, however, he carries two dead knights back to their camp and the blood never really comes away from the ridiculous shirt Maric has let him borrow.  
  
“We’ll burn it,” he states, despising his own voice and how it _shake s_ _._  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
He’s fifty-five and there are thousands upon thousands of soldiers in his ranks.  
  
Staring at the attacking horde, keeping his mind clear and his hands steady, he sacrifices a few hundred of them as he walks away from the Blight. He knows their names, their villages; he liberated their nation so they could be born free and flock around the Hero of River Dane.  
  
He rides back to Denerim in silence, denying everyone the right to even look at him.  
  
“You heard the teyrn,” Ser Cauthrien snaps, a horse’s length behind him, an ugly echo. “Do as he _comman ds .”_  
  


  
  
  
  


**4.  
  
**

He’s five and sees his father’s face through the gaps between the narrow planks in the barn where the Orlesian soldiers have stormed in, shouting at each other in a language Loghain does not understand. But he understands terror and he understands _hide, darling, hide and keep quiet_ and even if he does not see his mother's face he can hear her breathing. Quick, pained, muffled - then _nothing_ .  
  
Nothing as he crawls up to her later, when the joyless laughter and strange grunting has subsided.  
  
Nothing as he sees the blood between her legs, the strange angle of her neck. He’s almost a grown man before he fully grasps what they had done, truly _done_ to her and it makes him throw up in a bush, makes his first fumbling attempts with a girl clouded by fear of accidentally doing the same, fear of invisible lines being crossed and a bright, giggling voice in his ear _I won’t break, do you want me to beg?_ _  
_ _  
  
_ _  
_

* * *

_  
_

He’s fifty-five, has lived so many wars that he’s lost count and Arl Howe stands in the middle of Loghain’s office, folding his hands over his stomach.  
  
“Highever is taken care of, my lord.”  
  
Loghain looks into the goblet of spiced wine, pressing back the flurry of regrets and doubts.  
  
“My men were thorough, my lord. They are dead. All but the oldest son - Fergus - though the Blight will certainly take him and we killed his heir.” A quick, sly smile. “And made the wife spread her legs.”  
  
The goblet trashes against the stone wall once Howe is gone, leaving a terrible noise in its wake.  
  
  
  
  
  


**5.**

  
He’s twenty-two and it rains in the little village north of the Wilds where he encounters Mother Ailis again. The war is over, has moved from the battlefields into the ones who were there, conducting it. He breathes war, dreams it. When he turns, he expects to see attacking forces; around every corner there’s a corpse.

Despite the rain she takes him by the hand and leads him to the place where she put all the bodies to rest, the garden of outlaws that she had known that no one would acknowledge once the fighting had subsided, the souls she has guarded ever since.

“Here is your father’s grave,” she says, softly, pressing his hand between her own. “He was so brave.”  
  
And surprising even himself, Loghain cries.  
  
“Forgive me,” he says, mumbles the awkward confessions against the soaked chantry robes as Mother Ailis takes him in her arms and holds him like the small child he feels like he’s never been. “ _Maker_ , forgive me.”  
  
For all that he has done, for all that he has yet to do.  
  
“There is nothing to forgive, Loghain,” she says but they both know that isn’t true.   
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“I yield,” he tells Bryce Cousland’s daughter, kneeling before her with his sword flat on the floor, his neck bared in defeat.   
  
He’s fifty-six and it’s not forgiveness he’s asking but close enough, the closest he will ever be to it now. 

  
  
**6.**  
  
  
He’s eighteen and his father sends him away to protect the rebel prince who has put them all in danger but seems to have won the loyalty of Gareth of Oswin within seconds all the same.  
  
“Don’t ask me to just _leave_ you,” he protests, a dread so thick he cannot breathe through it is filling his entire body. He sees his father’s face through the narrow planks of the barn again, sees him return home that afternoon, drenched in Orlesian blood, telling Loghain they need to run. “I won’t do it.”  
  
“That’s exactly what you will do,” his father replies and in that dreadful, shivering moment Loghain can feel his entire future unravel.  
  
“Do your best,” his father says because that’s what his father always says, the only oath he will hold his son to.  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
He’s fifty-seven with darkspawn blood in his veins and on his way to Orlais.  
  
“Do your best,” Elissa tells him in Amaranthine.  
  
Loghain nods, like he once nodded to his father. “Of course.”  
  
  
  
  
  
**7.**  
  
  
He’s eighteen and defiant, his fist in Maric’s face, the loss of his father raw and painful in his throat, twisting his voice into thorns.  
  
“You can’t knight _me_ to make me throw my life away for _you_ ,” he spits.  
  
He’s wrong about that; he’s wrong about so many things.  
  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  


He’s older than he thought he’d ever be and the wars are still raging inside his bones. Other people’s wars for other people’s reasons though he has stopped to think of them as such, borders so easily dissolved in the face of old gods and holes in the fabric of the sky. Humbled at long last, perhaps. It’s about time.  
  
In a recovered Keep in the middle of the desert, he sits wedged in between the odd agents of an Inquisition he has little reason to question, though even less reason to fully grasp the scope of.  
  
The Fereldan Commander looks at him with the gravitas of someone with a purpose to his glances and Loghain searches his memory. He remembers most lieutenants, would like to think the same goes for the soldiers though time hasn’t sharpened every sense and the details of his years of command have indeed begun to blur. He wasn’t at Ostagar, at least, that particular event has bone-hard contours at the back of his mind.  
  
“You helped Uldric overthrow the Circle at Kinloch Hold,” the man says, finally, when they’re alone under the stars. “I served there.”  
  
“I see,” Loghain says, because suddenly he does. “Yes, that was - unfortunate. Though it was never my intention to cause a…”  
  
“Bloodbath?” The commander sounds grim, but there’s a softer edge to his tone, a grim sort of humour pushing through. “I wondered why you did it, back then. Now - now I have an army allied with rebel mages.”  
  
In the distance Loghain spots the Inquisitor, a battle-scarred noble carrying an exquisite longbow and a bravery that is laced with doubt. He feels the same kind of certainty around her as he once did at the Landsmeet, though he has no desire to delve deeper into that tonight.  
  
“Do you think she’s the Herald of Andraste then?” he asks the commander instead. 

“I don’t know,” comes the reply, then a hesitant, poignant: “I don’t _care_. She’s the heart of this order nonetheless.”

The commander clears his throat.

”I see,” Loghain says again.

  
  
  
  
  
**8.**  
  
  
He’s five, he’s eighteen, nineteen, twenty, forty-six and fifty-five, he’s fifty-six, fifty-seven and ready to die.   
  
Instead, he lives.  
  
  
  


* * *

  
He’s sixty-five and the nightmares of the Fade taunts him, without much success.  
  
_You destroy everything you touch_ , it says, as though his greatest fear would be the truths spelled out in plain sight.  
  
“Welcome to the club,” Hawke laughs beside him. “We hold meetings in Kirkwall every fortnight.”  
  
“I should be invited after this,” the Inquisitor grunts, firing a burning arrow into the partly corporeal body of a rage demon.  
  
They fight their own despair, they fight the Fade itself until the inevitable end.  
  
“Fight well,” he says, glancing sideways into the monstrous being that blocks their only escape and he’s a young man again, looking into his father’s grim determination, looking at himself from the outside. “You won’t die while I draw breath.”  
  
And raising his sword one last time he thinks of Anora, thinks of Ferelden, thinks of the oath his father made him swear. _Do your best._ _  
_  
Perhaps he has, at long last.  
  
History is a broken circle but the Fade snaps shut around him with a soft, liberated gasp.  
  



End file.
